Morton Lyon "Mort" Sahl (born May 11, 1927) is a Canadian-born American comedian and actor, widely considered the first modern stand-up comedian. He was the first comedian to dress casually and speak about current events in a matter-of-fact style. He helped to get Lenny Bruce some gigs at the hungry i, and occasionally wrote jokes for speeches delivered by President John F. Kennedy.[1][2] Sahl got deeply involved in the post-Warren Commission investigation of Kennedy's death.

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Sahl was born on May 11, 1927 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.[2] His father, Harry Sahl, was a court reporter who met his wife when she responded to an advertisement he took out in a poetry magazine.[1] The family moved to Los Angeles, California and Mort joined the ROTC unit at Belmont High School. He was also on the staff of the school's newspaper, the Belmont Sentinel. Actor Richard Crenna was one of his classmates.

In 1976, Sahl wrote an autobiography called Heartland. It is a bitter account of his rise in comedy, his obsession with the Kennedy assassination, his decline in show business, and his longtime friendship with Hugh Hefner. In 1979 he briefly hosted an afternoon talk show on WRC Radio, in Washington, D.C.

During the 1980s, Sahl made many jokes critical of his old friend, Ronald Reagan ("Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan can't tell the difference!"). Sahl and his wife were invited to the White House by Nancy Reagan, where President Reagan roasted him at a White House tribute in front of many other top comedians. Sahl said to television interviewer Charlie Rose of the Reagans, "They are very, very forgiving."

In the late 1980s, his comedy featurette "In Spite Of The News" was heard on the Mutual Broadcasting System.

Following Kennedy's assassination in 1963, Sahl's interest in who was behind it was so great that he became a deputized member of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's team to investigate the murder.[2] As a result, Sahl's comedy began to reflect his politics and included readings and commentary on the Warren Commission Report. His earlier anti-Kennedy jokes and his onstage tirades against the Warren Commission alienated much of his audience. He was effectively blacklisted and his shows were cancelled. Sahl's income dropped from US$1 million to US$19,000 a year. (According to the Inflation Calculator of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, $19,000 in 1964 was the equivalent of $144,000 today.) However, the rising tide of counterculture fueled his comeback.

Sahl's humor has always been based on current events, especially politics. He broke new ground in the late 1950s and early 1960s by looking to the day's newspaper headlines for many of his monologues, rather than relying on one-liners. His trademark is to appear on stage with a newspaper in hand, casually dressed in a V-neck sweater.[2] In 1960 he was dubbed "Will Rogers with fangs" by Time magazine.[4]

When John F. Kennedy, a personal friend, became President, Sahl began making jokes that were critical of Kennedy's policies. Television host Ed Sullivan refused to let Sahl tell any Kennedy jokes on The Ed Sullivan Show, which meant Sahl was seldom seen on TV during the next few years.

Woody Allen has said, "I adored Mort Sahl," and added he would not have become a comedian himself if not for Sahl's example, which proved a comedian could succeed with offhand intellectual material. He compared Sahl's influence on comedy to the effect Charlie Parker had on jazz.[8] "I still find Mort Sahl funny," Allen said in 2008. "I was with him the other day, in California, and he's 81 and he's teaching at Claremont College. And he said they have a course out there that they offered him to teach, on the Holocaust, and he didn't take it. He said, 'I wanted to see first how history judges the event.'"[9] Allen introduced Sahl's 2002 stand-up appearance at Joe's Pub in New York City and attended a similar show several years later at "B.B. King's" in Manhattan's Times Square.

^ abcSahl, Mort (23 December 2003). Fresh Air. Interview with Terry Gross. National Public Radio. Retrieved 11 March 2015. He wrote jokes for JFK and appeared on What's My Line? and The Ed Sullivan Show. In addition, he was the first comic to make a live recording, the first to do college concerts and, in 1960, the first to grace the cover of Time magazine.

^ abcdef"About Mort Sahl". American Masters. 19 March 2006. In his trademark V-neck sweater, with the day's newspaper tucked under his arm, Mort Sahl has satirized—and entertained—presidents from Eisenhower to Clinton.